Due: Fri Sept 30 at 5:30pm. Weight: 10% (of final project grade)

You should form teams of size 2-3 for the course project. Broadly, the writeup for this milestone should tell us what you are planning to do for the project. Typical projects do one of the following things:

• Design a novel optimization method for an existing problem of some importance.
• Give a novel theoretical proof that an existing optimization method works.
• Implement a known method and show that it works practically (possibly in a new setting/regime that has not been considered before).

Check out the "Project ideas" post on the Piazza group for a list of project ideas (taken from previous years). The writeup should meet the following criteria:

• It should have the project title and andrew IDs of the team members.
• It should have a good introduction and background material, typically covering 2-4 peer-reviewed papers. It should mention why the problem is important and/or challenging. Abstract is not required.
• It should state as clearly as possible what you wish to accomplish by the second milestone and by the end of the project.
• It should be limited to 2 pages, excluding references, and should be in NIPS 2016 style.

Email one copy per project to the TAs.

Grading breakdown: introduction (40%), clear problem statement (40%), writing (20%).